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I'm creating the Tail Mate II

Tail mate

Here's an alternate design idea, easily adapted to the task of lifting a tailwheel.

I designed and built this some years ago for my mom. At the time she was still living on her own, and had one of those "I fell and I can't get up" episodes. No damage, just poor leg strength, but it led me to think about some sort of assistance device. She could crawl ok, so the device became a lift chair. There are commercial versions for $3K or so...but we build airplanes, right?

A linear actuator drives a simple carriage up and down a vertical square tube. Actuator capacity is about 250 lbs, so it will easily lift old ladies and tailwheels. The carriage is largely made from two 1/4" aluminum plate arms, waterjet cut from .dwg drawings. The arms would easily mount a tailwheel shoe in place of the seat.

This particular actuator is DC, connected to an AC power supply for household use. I'll convert to battery and take it to the hangar eventually. Yes, it has a remote.
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Cool Chair for mom 👍. Hopefully she never had to crawl to it .

I looked at linear actuators but anything over 16”-24”. stroke gets pretty pricey. I wanted to be able to lift the Tailwheel at least 36” .
 
I'm not much of a designer. But it would be even easier to have a position at the full extension where you pin the load, disconnect the actuator, retract it, relocate its base, remove the pins and proceed.

Assuming it's an infrequently used tool....

Dave
 
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